HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – A team of Purdue University Calumet engineering students placed third in the College Division of the recent international NASA Great Moonbuggy Race.
Benjamin Moul of Hart, Mich., and Maria Frebis of Murfreesboro, Tenn., drove Purdue Calumet’s buggy, completing the course in four minutes and 32 second. A team from the University of Alabama-Huntsville, won in 4:12, while students from the University of Puerto Rico Humacao placed second.
The 19th annual competition, held at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, challenged 93 teams of college and high school students to design, build and race a moonbuggy, a lightweight, human-powered vehicle similar to the Apollo lunar rovers developed by NASA four decades ago.
Teams from as far away as India, Russia and the United Arab Emirates competed.
A second Purdue Calumet buggy, weighing just 73 pounds, won the Featherweight Award for lightweight moonbuggies.
Other members of the Purdue Calumet team were Philip Mann of Burr Ridge, Ill., Mark Bauman of Goshen, Ind., and Kudjo Achem of Chicago.
Students involved in the lightweight buggy design were Haosen Guo of Baoding, China, Justin Stengel of Lowell, Sasho Cubrinoski of Crown Point, Diego Mendez of Chicago, Cody Eitzen of Munster, and Andrea David of Crown Point.
